A Daughter of the Snows eBook

CHAPTER I

“All ready, Miss Welse, though I’m sorry
we can’t spare one of the steamer’s boats.”

Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first
officer’s side.

“We’re so busy,” he explained, “and
gold-rushers are such perishable freight, at least—­”

“I understand,” she interrupted, “and
I, too, am behaving as though I were perishable.
And I am sorry for the trouble I am giving you, but—­but—­”
She turned quickly and pointed to the shore.
“Do you see that big log-house? Between
the clump of pines and the river? I was born
there.”

“Guess I’d be in a hurry myself,”
he muttered, sympathetically, as he piloted her along
the crowded deck.

Everybody was in everybody else’s way; nor was
there one who failed to proclaim it at the top of
his lungs. A thousand gold-seekers were clamoring
for the immediate landing of their outfits. Each
hatchway gaped wide open, and from the lower depths
the shrieking donkey-engines were hurrying the misassorted
outfits skyward. On either side of the steamer,
rows of scows received the flying cargo, and on each
of these scows a sweating mob of men charged the descending
slings and heaved bales and boxes about in frantic
search. Men waved shipping receipts and shouted
over the steamer-rails to them. Sometimes two
and three identified the same article, and war arose.
The “two-circle” and the “circle-and-dot”
brands caused endless jangling, while every whipsaw
discovered a dozen claimants.

“The purser insists that he is going mad,”
the first officer said, as he helped Frona Welse down
the gangway to the landing stage, “and the freight
clerks have turned the cargo over to the passengers
and quit work. But we’re not so unlucky
as the Star of Bethlehem,” he reassured her,
pointing to a steamship at anchor a quarter of a mile
away. “Half of her passengers have pack-horses
for Skaguay and White Pass, and the other half are
bound over the Chilcoot. So they’ve mutinied
and everything’s at a standstill.”

“Hey, you!” he cried, beckoning to a Whitehall
which hovered discreetly on the outer rim of the floating
confusion.

A tiny launch, pulling heroically at a huge tow-barge,
attempted to pass between; but the boatman shot nervily
across her bow, and just as he was clear, unfortunately,
caught a crab. This slewed the boat around and
brought it to a stop.

“Watch out!” the first officer shouted.

A pair of seventy-foot canoes, loaded with outfits,
gold-rushers, and Indians, and under full sail, drove
down from the counter direction. One of them
veered sharply towards the landing stage, but the other
pinched the Whitehall against the barge. The
boatman had unshipped his oars in time, but his small
craft groaned under the pressure and threatened to
collapse. Whereat he came to his feet, and in
short, nervous phrases consigned all canoe-men and
launch-captains to eternal perdition. A man
on the barge leaned over from above and baptized him
with crisp and crackling oaths, while the whites and
Indians in the canoe laughed derisively.